Hydraulic stimulation is used to improve productivity of hydrocarbon formations. Hydraulic stimulation involves injecting a fluid into a geologic formation at a high enough pressure to open naturally occurring rock fractures to improve formation permeability. Performing hydraulic stimulation requires knowing the pressure to be applied to the fluid. In addition, an amount of expected increase in permeability is also required in order to determine if pursuing production will be cost effective.
In order to obtain this information, a conventional pressure test is typically performed. This test involves applying a pressurized fluid to the formation of interest at an initial pressure and recording the pressure decay over time, which can take a week or longer. In nano-Darcy shale, the time can be on the order of months for only a slight pressure decay. In addition, temperature fluctuations over that time can corrupt the recorded data degrading its value. Hence, it would be appreciated in the hydrocarbon production industry if methods and apparatus could be developed to decrease the time of formation pressure tests.